Gaming Letdowns

you die at the end of persona 3, this is something they fixed in persona 4.

I'm actually just beat the game. So the game is spoiled for me, thanks I was SO close from beating the game spoiled-free/internet help free.

 

This makes me quite sad, I personally loved SPM, in fact, it's probably one of, if not my favorite Wii game, so it's not always awful to branch out a llittle. But TTYD is probably one of my favorite games and they only used the formula for that for half of the series. If Sticker Star is actually this bad, then that would probably be the most disappointing game I've played.

SPM at least had an actual fucking story and characters, so it still retained that Paper Mario charm (albeit while taking away the battle system, which was unfortunate), wheras PMSS is essentially downgraded Paper Mario N64 with gimmicky and rather pointless additions.
At least the soundtrack is good.

 

Also, I know, I just meant more than two

Like Four Swords Adventures? (4SA is actually a different game story-wise than Four Swords).

 

coughcoughvalvedoesn'tmakeathirdgameforaseriescoughcough

 

coughcoughvalvedoesn'tmakeathirdgameforaseriescoughcough

 

I'm actually just beat the game. So the game is spoiled for me, thanks I was SO close from beating the game spoiled-free/internet help free.

ok is it that hard not to quote people? you are part of the problem here. use your brains, people

 

I'm sure I've had my fill of disappointments, but... usually I accept the creator's decision. Of course, there are obvious cases where people who have no business making decisions, change something...

I remember having a chip on my shoulder for yearrrrs with Electronic Arts and how the final Ultima games suffered and changed from the creator's vision.

These quotes I found on scattered sites, Escapist, Wiki, some blogs, and some others I forget can give a quick look into it :

Spoiler

Ultima VII: The Black Gate was released in April of 1992 and is greatly considered the pinnacle of the Ultima series. At the time, Electronic Arts was a big competitor of Origin. At one point, the bigger EA took Origin to court, which ended in a costly out-of-court settlement for Origin. Origin believed the games they made were works of love, and saw EA as trying to get ahead any way they can. In September of 1992, though, Origin was acquired by Electronic Arts.

Under EA’s banner, Origin went on to release a lot of great games like the rest of the Wing Commander series. However, the quality of the Ultima series started to drastically suffer. The last game, Ultima IX was, well, it was stunningly terrible. The storyline had been scrapped multiple times due to EA’s interference, the systems had been pared down to almost nothing, the majority of the team was pulled away to work on Ultima Online, and Electronic Arts would not waver on the release date. Ultima IX was not received well by the community, to say the least. Not long after, all games being worked on by Origin, like Ultima Online 2 and Ultima X, were canceled and Origin was shuttered by EA.

After this title [Ultima Online], Electronic Arts decided that Origin would become an online-only company after the completion of Ultima IX in 1999. However, within a year's time, in part due to Ultima IX's poor reception,[5] EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Ultima Online 2, Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online. Richard Garriott left Origin shortly after and founded Destination Games in 2000.

Why the holy-fire view of William M. Hawkins III, founder of Electronic Arts? Because (as this exec explained) EA meant to win in the computer game business not only by making good games, but by preventing competitors from making good games too - by actively interfering with their ability to do business. As one example, EA had filed a frivolous lawsuit against Origin. Forced into a costly out-of-court settlement, Origin execs asked Trip Hawkins why he had allowed the suit; he responded, "This is just business. This is the way we're going to win."

Furthermore, EA was all about marketing. For Hawkins the question was never, "How good is this game?" It was always, "How can we sell this?"

Garriott: "We doubled the size of the company from 200 to 400 that first year. We went from 5-10 projects to 10-20, and staffed those projects almost entirely with inexperienced people. It won't surprise you to learn those projects were not well managed. That was totally Origin's fault. We failed, and we ended up killing half of those products. That's probably what set up the EA mentality that 'Origin is a bunch of [deleted],' pardon my French."

Spector: "Once it became apparent we were getting a little crazy, EA started taking a firmer hand with us, integrating us into the machine in subtle and not so subtle ways, and that's when things started to get a little less pleasant. Every company has its politics but, in my relatively limited experience, EA was an incredibly political place - lots of empire building, folks jockeying for bigger, better jobs, competing for resources, marketing dollars and so on. And there were certainly people at EA who, let's just say, lacked confidence in Origin's development management and - less sensibly, I think - in the Austin development community in general. There were a lot of strange decisions."

Garriott: "There are people at EA to this day who I respect either as brilliant or at least well-intentioned. [CEO] Larry Probst was often not supportive of the things I was doing, but I respect Larry because he was always clear, rational and consistent in his lack of support. I felt [Chief Creative Officer] Bing Gordon understood sometimes; I always felt Bing's intent was to help me do my best. Nancy Smith [Executive VP, North American Publishing] empathized and desired success for all at Origin. [But] there were others who got into politics, who very clearly would get into the mode of 'Your success will work against my success. EA caring about you will mean they care less about me.' The politicians began to look at us as the enemy, and would actively work against us."

Once EA started exerting a tighter grip on Origin, Mattrick pushed teams to stay on schedule (an insistence that badly damaged Ultima VIII, according to Garriott). Mattrick killed many projects because they had spun out of control, and cancelled other projects for reasons staffers still consider mysterious. Some staffers believe (though not for attribution) Mattrick undermined Origin because it competed for resources with Distinctive's new incarnation, EA Canada. This view arose particularly because of the way Mattrick managed Origin's late-'90s move into online games.

The forces that propelled Electronic Arts to success and gave it the funds to purchase Origin - the incessant marketing, the quest for blockbusters, even the ferocious executive infighting - also made it difficult to exploit Origin effectively. EA could have preserved Origin as a small design house gestating new ideas. Rather than alienating staffers and discarding the valuable Ultima and Wing Commander brands, EA could have kept Origin alive in body and spirit, just as it could have preserved the other studios it bought: Westwood and Bullfrog and Maxis and...

But though this was technically possible, it was not imaginable. Like any huge company, EA is risk-averse. The company has every incentive to play it safe and do a competent job on Madden 2009 or Tiger Woods 2017.

EA finally shut down Origin in 2004 and relocated UO to their California studio. The last employee fired was producer Jeff Hillhouse, Richard Garriott's first hire back in 1983. Hillhouse, like many other key Origin employees, now works with Garriott at NCSoft.

Let's see any other gaming letdowns I can think of...
Well, I can't talk about it since I didn't actually play it... But, Duke Nukem Forever. I had high hopes for that game for SUCH a long time. And... it took forever. Then when it came out, I heard it didn't really have whatever made Duke 3D gold back in the day...
But, without playing it... shouldn't be talking... lol

What about something in-game? Hmmm...
I'll get back to you on that. While there are disappointments abound, I try to be very accepting, as people have very varied ideas of what makes something good...

 

Yeah EA is amazing in that regard, somewhere along the road they lost all tact and morallity. Even though they keep screwing over franchises with immense failures (Ultima, C&C, Sim City and more recently Dungeon Keeper) which bomb as a result, they still do well financially wise. I'd really wish they'd stop messing around with games to make them appeal to whatever's hip right now, but whatever they are doing it's still giving them money i guess

I had to see the Command & Conquer series end with C&C Tiberian Twilight, which turned out to be a really pathetic attempt to cash-in on the squad based RTS games that were popular at the time. The new C&C Generals turned out to be so bad it was actually terminated before it went beta. The only thing that's still there is C&C Red Alert 3, which was ok.

 

I'm supprised only one person said that no half life 3 was a let down

 

I'm surprised only one person caused a mass genocide of the Jewish population

 

capcomcancelledmegamanuniverseandmegamanfpsandmegamanlegends3andmademegamanfatboxartmaninstreetfighter

 

Yeah EA is amazing in that regard, somewhere along the road they lost all tact and morallity. Even though they keep screwing over franchises with immense failures (Ultima, C&C, Sim City and more recently Dungeon Keeper) which bomb as a result, they still do well financially wise.

What are you talking about? Dungeon Keeper mobile did well! Just look at all of those 5 star and EA totally didn't threaten to slit people's throats if they rated it less than a 5.

But yeah (speaking of mobile games heh) the only thing that comes to my mind specifically that really let me down was probably when Rolando 3 was cancelled. Both Rolando 1 and 2 were great games for iOS (especially around 2009 Jesus Christ) and it's kind of disappointing that the third one was cancelled because their publisher wanted to make it a F2P title. This alone kind of rubbed me in the wrong direction towards F2P games and kind of steered me away from F2P in general.

But at least the devs are making a new game. Kind of ironic that it's going to be a F2P game but from what I've seen from GDC videos they don't seem to intend to make it a money-grabber or have hard paywalls which kind of seems nice. Plus it gives me a nice Wind Waker/Animal Crossing fusion feel which never seems bad.

 

Most of the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory installments have you as a male character wooing female characters. Only a small portion of them have "girl versions". Why? Isn't the target audience of fucking farming simulators female? Not to mention that in one of them, the female Japanese version let you take on female partners, but of course the American import removed that cuz homosex is wrong lel.

Golden Sun 3 in many ways, even though I still liked it a lot, it didn't live up to the glorious, shining perfection that 1 and 2 were. Guess that's what happens when you leave the series untouched for 10 goddamn years. And while we're on that subject, the fact that they haven't made GS4 yet is just as bad if not worse (since 3 specifically left on a cliffhanger meant to lead into a 4, it has now been many years once again).

 

What are you talking about? Dungeon Keeper mobile did well! Just look at all of those 5 star and EA totally didn't threaten to slit people's throats if they rated it less than a 5.

Oh yes, THAT. I allmost forgot about that, wow that's so incredibly asinine that i wasn't expecting that even from EA or any company in general. I know it's super popular to keep insulting EA for everything wrong with publishing, but nowadays they really are useless at getting anything right. It's like a goddamn paradox, they suck so hard but they still stay alive, while a indie dev needs to only make one mistake to get kicked out of the industry forever. It's not fair.

Most of the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory installments have you as a male character wooing female characters. Only a small portion of them have "girl versions". Why? Isn't the target audience of fucking farming simulators female? Not to mention that in one of them, the female Japanese version let you take on female partners, but of course the American import removed that cuz homosex is wrong lel.

This kind of stuff irritates me, too. Having white-ass guys as playable characters all the time, that's a bit jarring but i can live with that i guess. But having a game with dating options and it'd be appreciated to being able to choose genders. Persona 3+4 both only allow you to choose male, only the PSP ports give you the choice of playing female.
While Persona 4 gives you the option to friendzone girls, Persona 3 doesn't and since dating girls give you bonuses ingame you were more or less shoehorned into dating them whenever you'd like it or not.

And im going to quote a post i made elsewhere:

I really hate it when in videogames(or media in general) women are designed with sex appeal in mind. What accounts to a serious story becomes godawfully stupid when you play with a girl armed with only a thong and bra, and despite getting bruised/shot/beaten she will always have that shiny oily tan skin. It's horribly sexist in nature no matter if the girl gets the starring role, giving the idea that battle prowress means jack shit if you don't have a d-cup and aren't willing to show it off.
I really wonder if this is a thing execs pitch in with the developers, thinking that some 14-year olds will supposingly get off on this and buy it only to see some boob action. Because i have absolutely no fucking clue who would even get turned on by that.

Guys also get smacked by this, having to wear massive-shoulder pads and big chunks of oversized armor that still nicely grafts around their abdomen. It's also groan-worthy that even if the guy has to slay ultimate evil, they still cram a girl next to him regardless if she fits in the story at all. Hey, even if you can slay dragons and shit if you can't get a girl you are still a ~total loser~

It really becomes a sight to behold when you put both a guy and girl with these stereotypes applied to them next to eachother. It's so damn stupid.

 

This^

You'd think that with all the feminism and social justice activists on the internet (who tend to have an interest in gaming), gaming industries would take more care to abolish the groan-worthy stereotypes you just mentioned. Perhaps one day they'll make some progress towards eliminating that stuff...one piece of functional armor at a time. Then again, with sex influencing so many things other than video games, it may be asking for much :/

 

Resident Evil 4 after what was shown in the beta trailers.

 

This^

You'd think that with all the feminism and social justice activists on the internet (who tend to have an interest in gaming), gaming industries would take more care to abolish the groan-worthy stereotypes you just mentioned. Perhaps one day they'll make some progress towards eliminating that stuff...

Spoiler

Lufia 2, an rpg for the SNES, involves two warriors falling in love and having a wedding in-game after the supposed threat is defeated. As soon as their wedding is over they throw off their wedding garbs to reveal their armor underneath and immediately go back to doing what they do. You watch a relatively long cutscene of events occurring season by season, they have a baby, etc. After a year passes their newborn is kidnapped by one of the supposed threat's lackeys, and they both, alone and together, go out to kick his ass and get their child back (Unsurprisingly the game isn't over yet, and there's a new threat bigger than the supposed one).

Hidden text highlight (or click) to view:

And at the very end of the game, after you beat the true final bosses and save the world, the two of them die together, using the last of their strength to prevent the final boss's flying fortress from crashing into their home town where their kid is. Yes, this happens in a SNES game overshadowed by Chrono Trigger having came out earlier the same year.

 

not sure how this game is supposed to combat dasu's points about lack of gender equality and stereotypes but ok

 

I didn't mention any genders, did I

 

If they have a baby the genders are fairly heavily implied